


Absolution

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Shame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many things in his life that Julian is ashamed of...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> Set in early S3, after "Civil Defense" (3x07). Companion piece to "Blameless".

Julian Bashir has (he flatters himself) just about perfected the art of presentation. As he walks through the corridors of Deep Space Nine he knows that he makes the Starfleet uniform look damned good: he is tall, dark and handsome, as immaculate as if he's just stepped out of a recruiting poster. He speaks with perfect confidence and carries out his duties with efficiency and brilliant intelligence, and he has won the respect of his colleagues in spite of their initial antipathy towards him on a personal level.

But there… ah, his inner life! Deep inside, Julian has many things that he feels ashamed of. Looking back on his behaviour when he first arrived on the station he can see where he was overly eager and painfully guileless and arrogantly self-assured: the memory of his fawning pursuit of Jadzia Dax can still make his cheeks burn if he lingers on it too long. Even though he's improved considerably since those early days he still catches himself brooding over the issue from time to time, calling particular instances to mind with better-than-Human recall and picking them apart second by second, pang by pang.

This guilt, he knows, is really only a surface manifestation of a deeper shame — two of them, actually, related but distinct. One is the knowledge that he was born with significant cognitive deficits, not in itself a problem (for he has read many accounts of families with developmentally delayed children who are happy, healthy and at peace with themselves), but the reaction of his parents in breaking Federation law to have him genetically augmented tells him all he needs to know about how much love they were able to feel for "Jules", the boy who couldn't tell a dog from a cat at the age of five. The knowledge that his true nature is so different from what they wanted from him is like a wound that will never heal, and every so often he can taste the blood of it, the acid metallic tang of fundamental self-hatred.

The other is the awareness that he is a fraud and a criminal — the fact that he had no voice in the perpetration of the crime is irrelevant, and every day he perpetuates the lie by pretending to be a normal human being of merely above-average intelligence. He's gotten good enough at living in the false skin that he scarcely even thinks about it anymore, but every so often the pain of the deception awakens within him, sharp and deep and terrible enough to leave him gasping for breath, his heart shattering in his breast.

He wonders what his friends would think of him if they knew. He knows that if word of his enhancements ever got out his life would be over: he would lose his home, his career and his freedom in a single stroke. Nevertheless there are days when he wishes that this is exactly what would happen; it would be such a blessed relief to fully relax his unceasing vigilance over every word and action.

These factors have been in play ever since he became aware of his genetic alterations in his mid-teens. He cannot look at his own face in the mirror without seeing artificial perfection. He has learned to live with this as well.

Just lately, however, there is a new aspect to his self-reproach that comes with the joy and the burden of something more exhilarating and more disturbing. Julian has taken a lover: another secret, as dangerous as any. Not one of the women who come and go through his life like mayflies, sharing his bed for a night or a weekend or a few days: no, this liaison is of much longer duration, the episodes of sex infrequent but incandescent, the full force of their emotional attachment played out in slight smiles and the glide of a sidelong glance and the thrust and parry of elegant words.

It is exhilarating because Julian adores Garak and has for a very long time — adoration deep enough that neither tales of atrocity nor threats of physical violence had been sufficient to drive him away from the dying Cardassian's side; connection strong enough that he'd risked his life without a moment's hesitation on Garak's behalf, and would do it again if the situation warranted; affection powerful enough that he'd forgiven Garak for whatever he'd done in his shadowed past, and had meant every word of it.

It is disturbing because the tales of atrocity were likely true, at least in part, and he's well aware that his blanket absolution probably covered crimes he couldn't begin to imagine. The dove-grey hands that touch him with varying degrees of gentleness and forceful passion are indelibly stained with the blood of nameless and faceless victims: Garak has never physically hurt him, but Julian is acutely aware that he very easily could with only the slightest shift in emphasis. And he is ashamed of the fact that this knowledge only makes the kisses and caresses bestowed upon him all the sweeter; he is guilty, because he takes such pleasure in this man who has brought so much suffering and death to others.

But not to him. Never to him. He believes with all his soul that Garak would not harm him. Perhaps he is being merely naive — another failing of which he is keenly cognizant — but what he sees in the spy's pale gaze in unguarded moments suggests that his adoration is not merely recognized, but reciprocated.

That in Garak's eyes, he is both innocent and incapable of significant sin.

Or perhaps it is all simply an elaborate game. Julian may never know. But ultimately it doesn't matter, because in the arms of his enigmatic friend — a brilliant, discerning, dangerous and unforgiving man who seems to find him fascinating and worthy of both time and attention — Julian feels, for a brief interval of shining grace, not only perfect, but blameless.

THE END


End file.
